Rate My Professor Ann-Marie Blanchard

Dr. Ann-Marie Blanchard serves as Lecturer in Philosophy within the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle campus. A native of Australia's east coast, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Literature with a specialty in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame Australia (2007–2010). She pursued graduate studies in the United States, obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Doctor of Philosophy in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (2018). Her dissertation, "Good and Virtuous Women? Gender and Ecology in Amber Outskirts," features a novel set in rural New South Wales alongside a critical analysis of gender dynamics and ecology in Australian bush literature.

Following her doctoral work, Blanchard spent a decade in the United States, where she directed a Liberal Arts program at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, emphasizing diverse global literature, philosophy, and theology. She taught creative writing at institutions including the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (2018) and Milwaukee Men’s Incarceration Facility (2015), and acted as Fiction Editor for cream city review (2014–2018). Her academic interests include creative writing, the philosophy of literature, aesthetics, postcolonial studies, embodiment, risk, addiction, and faith. She has delivered conference papers such as “The strong woman of Tim Winton’s Breath” (American Association of Australasian Literary Studies, 2021) and “Girls gone gaga: Catholic women, catastrophe, and redemption” (Durham University, 2018). Key publications feature the short story “Trouble Will Find You,” winner of the 2022 Missouri Review Editors’ Prize in Fiction (published 2023), poems in The Georgia Review (“Menagerie Eulogy” and “Life After,” Spring 2025), Palette Poetry (“Lovers on Fire in a Boat,” 2025), and Overland (“The Killer in Me,” 2024), as well as the book chapter “The Play of Style” in Rhetorical Approaches to College Writing (2015). Notable honors include a Pushcart Prize nomination (“Fidelity’s Bonefires,” 2023), shortlist for the ACU Prize for Poetry (“We Are Half Sky,” 2024), and various chapbook longlists and shortlists.